[Washington Post] From the top of the world to near the bottom, freakish and
unprecedented weather has sent temperatures soaring across the Arctic,
whipped the United Kingdom with hurricane-force winds and spawned
massive flooding in South America.
The same storm that
slammed the southern United States with deadly tornadoes and swamped the
Midwest, causing even greater loss of life, continued on to the Arctic.
Sub-tropical air pulled there is now sitting over Iceland, and at what
should be a deeply sub-zero North Pole, temperatures on Wednesday
appeared to reach the melting point — more than 50 degrees above normal.
That was warmer than Chicago.
Only twice before has the
Arctic been so warm in winter. Residents of Iceland are bracing for
conditions to grow much worse as one of the most powerful storms ever
recorded blasts through the North Atlantic. This rare “bomb cyclone”
arrived with sudden winds of 70 miles per hour and waves that lashed the
coast.
Thousands of miles south, in the center of Latin America,
downpours fueled by the Pacific Ocean’s giant El Niño pattern have
drenched regions of Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.
In
what’s described as the worst flooding in a half-century, more than
160,000 people have fled their homes. The Paraguay River in that nation
is within inches of topping its banks, and the Uruguay River in
Argentina is 46 feet above normal, according to a BBC News report.
The
dramatic storms are ending a year of record-setting weather globally,
with July measured as the hottest month ever and 2015 set to be the
warmest year.
Up and down the U.S. East Coast, this month will
close as the hottest December ever. In much of the Northeast into
Canada, temperatures on Christmas rose into the 70s — tricking bushes
and trees into bloom in many locations. In the Washington area,
forsythia, azaleas and even cherry blossoms were suddenly in full color.
“I
see this as a double whammy,” Michael Mann, a professor of meteorology
at Penn State University, said in an email. “El Niño . . . is one
factor, human-caused climate change and global warming is another. You
put the two together, and you get dramatic increases in certain types of
extreme weather events.”
The impact is more and more devastating.
In
rain-soaked Missouri, where more than a dozen people have died because
of the flooding, Gov. Jay Nixon (D) has declared a state of emergency.
Almost
two dozen levees along the Mississippi River are considered at risk,
and forecasts are calling for record or near-record crests of the river
and tributaries that feed it. Nearly 450 river gauges have hit flood
stage since Monday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
From
Illinois to Texas, 6 to 12 inches of rain have fallen since Dec. 26.
Dozens of new precipitation marks were set last weekend, in some cases
doubling or even tripling old records. Read More

Justin Gillis filed an excellent report tonight on factors behind severe weather around the world,
stressing that El Niño is hardly the only player: “This winter, a
climate pattern called the Arctic Oscillation is also keeping cold air
bottled up in the high north, allowing heat and moisture to accumulate
in the middle latitudes."

You almost assuredly saw at least one story about how the potent storm that triggered deadly tornado outbreaks and flooding
across the South and Midwest in recent days carried so much warm air to
the North Pole that temperatures over the sea ice, normally well below
zero through the dark boreal winter, briefly hitting 33 degrees
Fahrenheit today.*

Monday, December 21, 2015

[ScienceMag] Ask seismologists when they’ll be able to predict earthquakes, and
the answer is generally: sometime between the distant future and never.
Although there have been some promising leads over the years, the
history of earthquake forecasting is littered with false starts and
pseudoscience. However, some scientists think that Earth’s crust may
give hints before it ruptures, in the form of electromagnetic anomalies
in the ground and atmosphere that occur minutes to days before an
earthquake. Last week, here at the fall meeting of the American
Geophysical Union, researchers shared their evolving understanding of
these phenomena—and how they might be used to predict deadly quakes.
Kosuke Heki, a geophysicist at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan,
first got interested in the subject when he spotted an increase in the
total electron content of the ionosphere—the charged outermost layer of
the atmosphere—above Tohoku about 40 minutes before the magnitude 9.0 earthquake
struck in 2011. Heki had long used GPS data to study ionospheric
responses to earthquakes, which occur when the sudden movement of
Earth’s crust reverberates through the atmosphere. Ionospheric
disturbances interfere with the communication between GPS satellites and
receivers, leaving a fingerprint at specific radio frequencies that
researchers can tease out.
In 2011, Heki was skeptical of electromagnetic precursors. But since
then, he has used the world’s growing array of GPS stations to identify
similar signals before nine other major earthquakes, he explained at the meeting. In addition, Heki has found that earlier anomalies precede stronger earthquakes,
potentially reflecting the longer time needed to initiate rupture along
larger segments of a fault. Now, he says he’s convinced there’s really
something going on: “Seeing is believing.” Read More

[Discovery] When we talk about global warming, the number that everyone usually focuses on is that of the atmosphere, though the world’s oceans also are absorbing heat as well. Now, it turns out, lakes may be faring even worse.
According to a new study, climate
change is warming lakes even faster than the atmosphere or oceans, and
it could pose a significant future threat to the habitats for fish and
other aquatic animals, as well as drinking water for millions of people.
The study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, shows that
lakes are warming at an average of 0.61 degrees Fahrenheit each decade.
Over the next century, it could be enough to increase algal
blooms by 20 percent, including a 5 percent boost in toxic blooms. That
may not seem like a lot, but it’s enough to present a hazard to both
aquatic life and to the cleanliness of water supplies.
“We found that ice–covered lakes, including Canadian lakes, are
warming twice as fast as air temperatures and the North American Great
Lakes are among the fastest warming lakes in the world,” biologist
Sapna Sharma, a biologist at Canada’s York University, said in a press release.
The study focused upon 236 lakes, which contain more than half
of the world’s freshwater supply. They were monitored over a 25-year
period. Read More

[Star Pulse] A massive asteroid
flying by Earth on 2015 Christmas Eve has scientists on edge. While
NASA is downplaying the threat to human life and property, conspiracy
theorists and several experts say space rock 2003 SD220 is larger than
believed and has the potential to cause deadly earthquakes and eruptions
from dormant volcanoes.

According to a Sun report,
the Christmas Eve asteroid is one of at least 10 rocky bodies in space
that are considered "potentially hazardous" to Earth. According to an
internal report, NASA officials say it measures about 1.5 miles wide and
is moving at 5 miles per second.

"Little is known about the
remaining 10 high-priority targets other than the absolute magnitudes
and their heliocentric orbits that make six of them potentially
hazardous to Earth."

In a separate report, Paul Chodas, manager
of NASA's Near-Earth Object Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, California, issued a statement on the widespread rumors.

"There is no scientific basis -- not one
shred of evidence -- that an asteroid or any other celestial object will
impact Earth on those dates.

"If there were any object large enough to do that type of destruction in September, we would have seen something of it by now.

Sources say the asteroid flyby on Christmas Eve poses little threat as
it will only come within 6.7 million miles to the planet. By comparison,
that's 28 times the distance from here to the moon. Further, you'll
need a telescope to view the chunky body.

Extraterrestrial
collusion theorists who believe in a Planet X or Nibiru, are not
convinced of the recent announcement that downplays potential threats of
an impact. Read More

Monday, December 14, 2015

[Discovery] Imagine that you’re lost in a desert, or some other inhospitable
environment. You’ve got two choices. One is to stay in place and
conserve supplies and water, in order to make them last. The other is to
push on tenaciously and hope that you find a way out of your
predicament.
As it turns out, trees are like that too, when it comes to coping with
the hotter, drier environment created by climate change. In a new article in
the journal Global Change Biology, University of Washington researchers
studied two common tree species in southwestern Colorado, and found
that each had developed a different survival strategy.
“We really wanted to identify the entire suite of strategies that a
plant can use to grow in drier environments, as well as which of these
strategies each tree would employ,” UW biology professor Janneke Hille
Ris Lambers, who co-authored the article with graduate student Leander
Anderegg, said in a press release.
In the summer of 2014, the two researchers studied the slopes
of the La Plata Mountains in Colorado’s San Juan National Forest, where a
drought-ravaged ecosystem that’s become 1 degree Fahrenheit hotter over
the past 30 years is putting stress on trees.
One of the species under pressure is the ponderosa pine, whose habitat at the lower levels overlaps with that of the trembling aspens, a tree that predominates further up the mountainside. Read More

[New York Times] ‘‘Bolt heavy objects to the wall,’’ says Ross S. Stein,
a geophysicist who teaches at Stanford University. Loose things cause
many earthquake injuries; broken bottles cut feet, falling armoires and
flying televisions break bones. So fix your bookshelves in place and
hang framed art with quake-­proof mountings. Latch cupboards containing
breakables like glassware. Keep a headlamp by your bed, because there
will probably be a power failure. ‘‘These are the easy, cheap fixes,’’
says Stein, who studied earthquakes and their aftershocks for more than
30 years as a senior scientist with the United States Geological Survey.
Last year, he introduced temblor.net, a website and app that enables users to calculate their seismic exposure.

Even
in quake-­prone regions like the San Francisco Peninsula — where Stein
lives, three miles from the San Andreas fault — buildings end up with
fundamental vulnerabilities that require more expensive fixes. If you
live near a fault, make sure your house is fastened to its foundation.
Buildings tend to be cube-­shaped, and cubes, Stein says, ‘‘have no
structural integrity’’: When jolted, they collapse into parallelograms.
Strengthen your cube (or press your landlord to do so) with materials
like crisscrossing cables or plywood bracing.

Because
our homes generally aren’t built to handle shaking, Stein stores a
crowbar under his bed in case he needs to jimmy a damaged door. He keeps
extra propane for cooking and a solar-­powered cellphone charger. His
surgical mask, work gloves and shovel are always accessible (‘‘be ready
to rescue someone’’); three-­gallon bottles of distilled water are
stored in his garage. Everyone in his family has an orange emergency
whistle.

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Interesting story that explains how melting ice can change the rotation of Earth. This matches the I AM America information. - Lori

[Washington Post] Scientists have announced a potential
solution to a tantalizing puzzle about sea-level rise that’s remained
unsolved for more than a decade. In doing so, they’ve helped confirm
scientists’ latest estimates of 20th-century glacial melting and our
understanding of how sea-level rise fundamentally affects the planet —
down to the way it spins on its axis.At issue is a scientific quandaryknown as “Munk’s enigma,” which was introduced by famed oceanographer Walter Munk in a 2002 paper
published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The
enigma refers to a key discrepancy between the amount of sea-level rise
believed to have occurred during the 20th century and the effects it
should have produced on the planet — specifically, on the Earth’s
rotation.That’s right — in addition to all the
devastating and obvious effects sea-level rise will produce on the
planet, such as flooding and erosion, sea-level rise also has the more
subtle, but nonetheless mind-boggling ability to alter the way the Earth
rotates on its axis.“If
you melt ice sheets or glaciers, which happen to be close to to the
poles, and all of that mass moves from the poles toward the equators,
that movement is very similar [to] a figure skater who puts her arms
out,” said the new paper’s lead author, Jerry Mitrovica,
a professor of geophysics at Harvard University. “The melting of
glaciers acts to slow the spin of the Earth in a measurable way.”Additionally,
glacial melt can also cause the Earth’s rotation to wobble a little,
since “the melting of glaciers isn’t perfectly symmetrical, and the
water will move more in some parts of the Earth than others,” Mitrovica
said.Theoretically, one
should be able to look at calculations of how the Earth’s rotation has
changed over the years, compare these changes with the amount of glacial
melting believed to have occurred in the same time frame, and find that
the two measurements reinforce each other. Read More

Thursday, December 10, 2015

[Live Science] A new map of Earth's groundwater supply shows where on the planet water is locked up and "hidden" underground.
The map — the first of its kind — provides a visual representation of Earth's groundwater resources
and estimates that the planet's total groundwater supply stands at
approximately 5.5 million cubic miles (about 23 million cubic
kilometers).
Groundwater is the source of the world's second-largest collection of freshwater, according to the National Ground Water Association.
(The planet's primary source of fresh water comes from glaciers and ice
caps.) Groundwater is collected from rainfall that seeps underground
into aquifers and reservoirs beneath the land surface, according to the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). [Earth in the Balance: 7 Crucial Tipping Points]
Groundwater is important for energy and food
security, human health and healthy ecosystems, but it's also a resource
that is at risk from overuse and human pollution, researchers said in a
new study published online Nov. 16 in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The scientists obtained measurements of tritium, a radioactive version
of the hydrogen molecule, and water flow models that used properties of
water and its interaction with different types of rock to estimate how much groundwater the world possesses, where it is distributed and the age of the water in these underground reservoirs.
The researchers calculated that of the 5.5 million cubic miles of total
groundwater in the uppermost 1.2 miles (2 km) of the continental crust,
only between 24,000 to 129,500 cubic miles (100,000 to 540,000 cubic
km) is young (modern) groundwater, which is less than 100 years old.
But, why is it important to know the age of groundwater? It turns out that young and old groundwater are fundamentally different in how they interact with the rest of the water and climate cycle, according to the study. Read More

[Live Science] Severe air pollution is choking China with thick veils of smog, and yesterday (Dec. 7), Beijing issued a red alert
— the highest possible — due to poor air quality in the Chinese capital
city. Recent satellite images of the country show large hazy clouds
covering portions of northeastern China that are so thick they can be
seen from space.
The images, taken by NASA's Earth-watching Suomi NPP satellite on Nov. 30, show some of the most severe pollution that cities in eastern China, including Beijing, have seen this year.
Shortly after the satellite photos were taken, country officials issued
a code orange air pollution alert, which is the third tier of the
four-tiered alert system that indicates "heavy" pollution or an Air Quality Index
(AQI) reading between 201 and 300. On Monday, however, the country's
authorities upgraded the alert to a "code red," the highest level of
alarm. It's the first time China has ever issued a code red air
pollution alert, which indicates more than three days of air pollution
levels with an AQI greater than 300. Officials have advised millions of
the country’s citizens to stay indoors, implemented restrictions on
driving and put a ban on outdoor barbeque until the smog dissipates,
according to news reports. Read More

[Daily Mail] Researchers have found that the Earth's continents really aren't as solid as a rock.

A groundbreaking new study found that cratons, the cores of continents, are less stable than thought.

They
discovered the craton beneath the North American continent is extremely
deformed, and has moved 850 kilometres - but they don't know why, or
when.

They says its root is shifted relative to the center of the craton by 850 kilometers towards the west-southwest.

It
was assumed that cratons are stable because of their especially solid
structure due to relatively low temperatures compared to the surrounding
mantle.

A
team of German-American scientists now discovered that these cratons
that were assumed to be 'as solid as a rock' are not that solid after
all.

The
team lead by Dr. Mikhail Kaban from the GFZ German Research Centre for
Geosciences now discovered that the craton beneath the North American
continent is extremely deformed: its root is shifted relative to the
center of the craton by 850 kilometers towards the west-southwest.

This
fact is in contrast to the prevailing assumptions that these
continental roots did not undergo substantial changes after their
formation 2.5 to 3.8 billion years ago.

The study that appears in the latest online publication of Nature Geoscience contradicts this traditional view. Read More

[The Guardian] With more than 190 countries gathering in Paris this week the world
still has a chance to avoid dangerous global warming – but only just.
Already more than 160 countries have submitted pledges to reduce or
limit their emissions of greenhouse gases by 2025 or 2030. Collectively
these represent a substantial improvement on “business as usual”, but
they are some way from a path that offers a reasonable probability of
restricting the rise in global average temperature above its
pre-industrial level to no more than 2C.
There is a serious emissions gap over the next 15 years: under the
current pledges, emissions will go on rising until at least 2030.
Warming of about 2C creates deeply worrying risks of triggering the kind
of consequences – such as rapid sea level rise or the release of
methane from gas hydrates in the ocean – that could prove catastrophic,
potentially causing hundreds of millions of people to move from receding
coastlines and more extreme weather. That will mean more migration,
more refugees, more conflict and a world without peace and prosperity.
That is why the world community, via the UNFCCC, regards warming above
2C as dangerous.
In Paris countries are expected to commit themselves to more
ambitious emissions cuts, but there is no room for further delay.
Already we are seeing the impact of climate change growing around the
world, with more heatwaves, more record rainfall events and more intense
droughts. There are signs that the major land-based ice sheets on Greenland and west Antarctica may be becoming unstable. Together they hold enough water to raise global sea levels by about 13 metres. The climate warning signals are all around us.
Governments around the world now acknowledge these dangers, and have
started moving to low-carbon economies. Some have made more progress
than others; some are more ambitious. But the direction of travel is
clear.
One of the most crucial recent developments is that countries
increasingly recognise the compatibility of action to tackle climate
change with efforts to overcome poverty and raise living standards.
These aims are intertwined and reinforce, rather than compete, with each
other. Read More

[NPR] Chances are, you've picked up some chatter about the new global talks
on climate change. If you can't quite see how it matters to you,
personally, you might want to take a peek inside your pantry. Or your
candy jar. Because it might just affect your access to everything from
cheese to chocolate.
"It's very clear now that a changing climate will have a profound effect on agriculture," says Molly Brown, a geographer at the University of Maryland.
Take one simple example, she says: Vermont.
Farmers
in this state used to count on being able to plant corn in May, she
says. But weather patterns are shifting. The month of May is now
typically cold and wet, "so they're really not able to plant their corn
until the middle of June. That delays its harvest. And then we might
have an early frost."
The result is less corn for Vermont's cows, and less local milk for
the state's dairies. "It really changes the economic structure of how
dairy products are produced in Vermont," Brown says.
This kind of thing is happening all over the world, sometimes with life-changing consequences.
In
Ethiopia, Brown says, the country's traditional center of farming now
isn't getting enough rain for its crops. Meanwhile, rain is falling in
another region, in the northern part of Ethiopia, where few people live
because it used to be really dry. "So the question is, do people move up
north? Can they simply move the way they farm to that new region?"
Most farmers can't really see the the big global patterns of climate change, and certainly can't change what's happening.
But big multinational companies can see it, because they buy shiploads of farm products from all over the world.
Take, for example, Mars, Inc., maker of Mars bars, M&M's, Snickers, Skittles and more. Read More

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About LORI TOYE

Author and mystic Lori Toye has written fourteen books dealing with geographic changes in the Earth and how we can respond to these changes to create peace and harmony and advance our own spiritual growth and self-development. Topics include "Building the Seamless Garment - Revealing the Secret Teachings of Ascension and the Golden Cities," a book filled with lessons that focus on the hidden teachings of Ascension - the spiritual and mental process and the spiritual techniques that can free us from the confines of the need to reincarnate. Toye also created the first Earth Changes Map in 1989 delineating future changes to the Earth's geography, as well as the I AM America Atlas, a full color atlas of the I AM America Maps, featuring many new maps and prophecies. Originally published more than 20 years ago before public awareness of the serious environmental issues of Global Warming and Climate Change, Lori has been featured on NBC, FOX, UPN, London's Carlton Television, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.